☸🦍 fun pali lesson: AN 5.29 walk and recite live drill! Also notes about practice of walking meditation

AN 5.29  (link to sutta pali + english text)

 🔗🔊 (link to audio files) 

walking meditation. One of the only suttas where the Buddha talks about benefits of health exercise, and how it helps samadhi. That is basic qigong and taiji, jhāna, and samādhi, as you'll know for yourself if you practice enough and see the common threads underlying these meditative practices. 

AN 5.29 caṅkama-suttaṃ	AN 5.29 walking-meditation-discourse
“pañc-ime, bhikkhave,	"[There are] five-(of)-these, **********,
caṅkame ānisaṃsā.	walking-meditation benefits.
katame pañca?	Which five?
addhānak-khamo hoti,	(1) Long-journeys-{one becomes}-capable-of-enduring ****,
padhānak-khamo hoti,	(2) exertion-(one){becomes}-capable (of) ****,
appābādho hoti,	(3) free-of-disease (one) becomes,
asitaṃ pītaṃ khāyitaṃ sāyitaṃ	(4) [what has been] eaten, drunk, consumed, tasted,
sammā pariṇāmaṃ gacchati,	proper digestion (it) goes (through),
caṅkam-ādhigato samādhi	(5) walking-meditation-attained concentration
ciraṭ-ṭhitiko hoti.	{is} long-lasting ****.
ime kho, bhikkhave,	these indeed, *********,
pañca caṅkame ānisaṃsā”ti.	(are) five walking-meditation benefits.

This is a very short sutta. 42 seconds to recite in pali at casual conversational speed. 

I recorded 3 version of this:

1) pali only

2) english only

3) pali + english, interlaced phrase by phrase so you can say, think about the meaning, confirm you remembered the meaning by hearing the english translation.

At different points in your pali pronunciation and understanding education, you'll find that useful.

Once you become somewhat comfortable with speaking pali, I recommend you also record yourself reciting it and listening to it. 

About the practice of walking meditation

To clear up some big misconceptions about walking meditation.

You don't need special equipment or a 30 foot well manicured path, walking can be done anywhere.

Even in a crowded grocery store.

There are no official special instructions that you do for walking meditation (as opposed to sitting or other postures).

Just about anything you can do in sitting meditation with eyes closed, you can do walking with your eyes open.

You don't have to walk like a slow motion zombie and only place your attention on your foot, or any such special details like that. Those were later ideas that some traditions teach, as a way to train people to focus on something productive instead of what they usually do (monkey mind jumping around discursively wildly on random thoughts). 

Walking meditation can be done at any speed. And you can develop qualities of sati (remembering Dharma), samadhi (undistractible lucidity), and have partial four jhānas going on all at the same time.